World where might is right

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY BY MAHMUD JEGA

We had many interesting stories of our own in Nigeria last week, which were worth commenting on, but going into the weekend, they were all dwarfed by the international story of the US/Israeli attack on Iran and the killing of its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, along with some other of the country’s leaders.

Three quick things to note. There was no United Nations Security Council resolution authorising an attack on Iran; a meeting of UNSC was only said to be convened after the attacks, when the sneak deed was already done. In 2003, when the US determined to attack Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, at least then US Secretary of State Colin Powell pretended to table the matter at the Security Council. Powell claimed that Saddam Hussein’s regime stored weapons of mass destruction. Which turned out to be false, only after a million Iraqi lives were lost, millions more were maimed, with untold property destruction, quickly followed by a brutal civil war, fracturing of Iraqi society, and the rise of ISIS out of the ashes. This time there was no even attempt at a pretence; the only “meeting” that we saw was between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, two men that could hardly be trusted with world security. Trump’s Board of Peace, we can now see, is actually a Board of War.

The attack took place while “negotiations,” with Oman as mediators, were taking place in Geneva. It was the second time within a year that the US attacked Iran while negotiations were going on and the mediators in fact said after Friday’s round of meetings that “positive progress” had been made. Which means, the talks were essentially designed to deceive and to distract. To further deceive and distract, the White House repeatedly let out statements that a decision had not been made to launch an attack, which was another ruse. The lesson here is that whenever the US now engages anyone in “negotiations,” that country should keep its guards up. No one should also be deceived by news reports attributed to “sources” because they are all part of the deception gimmick.

The Americans have known this trade for many decades. In the early 1940s, before the outbreak of the Pacific War in World War Two, US Navy code breakers broke the Japanese Navy’s top-secret codes. Through it they learnt that an attack on the US was imminent [though they did not know exactly where it will hit]. A cable from Tokyo had told the Japanese Embassy in Washington to listen to Radio Tokyo’s weather forecast on a certain day. US intercepted and decoded the message. The message said if Radio Tokyo said, “East wind, rain,” then a decision had been made to launch the attack. If the weather forecast said “East wind, no rain,” than the decision was not to attack. It was probably a ruse anyway because Admiral Yamamoto’s attack fleet had sailed under strict radio silence more than a month earlier and had rendezvoused at a secret location in the Pacific, headed for the US top naval base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii.

President Franklin Roosevelt got adequate warning from decoded Japanese messages that the attack was coming, but kept it secret so that the Japanese will not know that their code was broken. Smoke was seen arising from the chimneys of the Japanese embassy in Washington because the Ambassador was burning his diplomatic cables, having heard the weather forecast. Therefore, whoever listens to CNN, BBC or Fox News these days and smugly thinks he or she is listening to the “news,” has got another thing coming.

At least CNN said President Trump never made clear what his ultimate intentions were as he prepared to attack Iran. Was it to render help to the protesters who took to Iran’s streets last month and Trump promised them that help was coming; to halt Iran’s nuclear program; to take out its missiles with the allegation that some of them could hit Europe and potentially even the US; to effect “regime change” in order to serve Netanyahu’s aims of taking out every adversary while Israel continues to subjugate Palestinians and steal their land with impunity in total disregard of Security Council resolutions?

Since many of those aims will not wash with most world opinion, the sneak attackers harped on stopping Iran from ever possessing nuclear weapons. I personally agree that Iran, and every other country in the world, should not have nuclear weapons. However, many countries already have them, beginning with the two countries involved in weekend’s attack, which reminds us of the ancient word hypocrisy.

Nine countries are known today to have nuclear weapons. USA has had nukes since 1945; Russia since 1949; UK since 1952; France since 1960; China since 1964; Israel since 1967; India since 1974; Pakistan since 1998 and North Korea since 2006. When India got nukes in the 1970s, then Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto declared that his country will also acquire them “even if we have to eat grass.” The only African country that ever possessed nukes was Apartheid South Africa, which acquired them in 1982 but dismantled them just before the transition to majority rule. How I wish Cyril Ramaphosa still has nukes hidden under the Table Mountain or in the Kruger National Park. Some countries, namely Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan housed nukes in the old USSR but gave them away to Russia when the Soviet Union dissolved. If only Ukraine had kept its own stocks, we wouldn’t have this war entering its fourth year now.

There are said to be 12,119 nukes in the world today, down from a high of 70,000 at the height of the Cold War. Who has them? USA has 3,700 nukes; Russia has 4,309; China has 600; France has 290 nukes; UK has 225; India has 180; Pakistan has 170; Israel has 90 nukes hidden in the Negev Desert while North Korea has only 50 nukes. Nukes appear to be the biggest national insurance policy in the world today. If not because of nukes, North Korea could long have been demolished by the US, once South Korean leaders whisper something into Trump’s ears the way Netanyahu did last week. If only the Iranian Ayatollahs had speeded up their uranium enrichment programs and kept even a few nukes under the Damavand mountains, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would still be alive today and smugly strutting about like Kim Jong-un.

Even though nine countries are known to have nukes today, only one country ever used them against an enemy. Lo and behold! That is the country that goes about saying no one should possess nukes. On August 6, 1945 the US exploded a nuke over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, followed six days later by another explosion over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. I do not blame Nigerian youngsters for being blithefully unaware of what a nuke could do to a city. Here is a summary of what the American nuke “Thin Boy,” dropped from the B-29 bomber “Enola Gay,” piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets and Major Thomas Ferebee, did to Hiroshima 81 years ago.

“The bomb burst in a clear blue sky about 1500 feet over the city of 245,000 people. A ball of fire 250 feet in diameter hung in the air… in an instant, 64,000 people were set ablaze or crushed… an intense thud of sound levelled 6,820 buildings… electricity was knocked out, water pipes burst in 70,000 places. Of forty-five hospitals in Hiroshima, three were left standing. Of the 290 doctors in the city, only 26 were uninjured and of 1,780 nurses in the city, only 126 escaped death or injury… Total death toll was 90,000 civilians and 10,000 soldiers. Thousands more died of leukaemia and radiation illnesses in the following decades.” Five days later on August 11, the US warplane Bock’s Car dropped the nuke “Fat Boy” on Nagasaki, with similar results.

Mr Trump, you have 3,700 nukes hidden in mountains, atop launchers, on bombers and in submarines under your belt; Netanyahu that was whispering into your ears has another 80 under his belt; your sidekicks the Brits and the French have hundreds more nukes behind their smiling and pontificating faces; Iranians signed a deal with US and Western powers, supervised by International Atomic Energy Agency to restrict their nuclear program to peaceful uses; you, Mr Trump tore it up during your first term, only to turn around now, with no evidence presented to the UN Security Council for the world to see, and proceed to kill the country’s leaders just when you were pretending to negotiate?

The world is back to pre-1945 ethos of Might Is Right. The Axis leaders Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Emperor Hirohito will be chuckling in their graves. Kim Jong-un must be adjusting his nuke belt and gloating at Iran, Libya, Syria, Panama, Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil, Denmark and Canada, that you guys forgot to take a nuke national insurance policy.